"Tancred sounds a bugle-blast which, it is hoped, will ring through the Catholic ranks not only in England, but in all Catholic Christendom. After speaking highly of General Booth and his large, daring, and comprehensive scheme, he points out that it will of necessity lead to the proselytising of neglected Catholics. He, therefore, cries aloud for the creation of a Catholic Salvation Army, or rather, for the utilisation of the Franciscans, Regulars and Tertiaries, for the purpose of social salvation."
"Mr. Francis Tancred" received from Mr. Stead the following letter:—
"January 12, 1891.
"Dear Sir,—I beg to forward you herewith a copy of the Review of Reviews, in which you will find your admirable article quoted and briefly commented upon. Permit me to say that I read your article with sincere admiration and heartfelt sympathy, and that it delighted the Salvation Army people at headquarters more than anything that has appeared for a long time. 'That man can write said Bramwell Booth to me, and I think he sincerely grudges your pen to the Catholic Church.—I am, yours truly,
W. T. Stead."[19]
Cardinal Manning[20] thereupon summoned Francis through my father, who was the Cardinal's friend, and to this single meeting Francis alludes in "To the Dead Cardinal of Westminster," a poem written, when, a year later, 1892, Manning died. Of this, A. M. has written:—
"In 1892 his editor asked him for a poem on Cardinal Manning, just dead, whom the poet had once visited; surely never was a poem 'to order' so greatly and originally inspired. I have alluded to days of deep depression in Francis Thompson's life, and they occurred now and then, with fairly cheerful intervals, at this time. It was in the grief and terror of such a day that he wrote 'To the dead Cardinal of Westminster,' which is a poem rather on himself than on the dead, an all but despairing presage of his own decease, which, when sixteen years later it came, brought no despair."
Claiming the ear of the dead, because the Cardinal asked the poet to go often to him, he writes in a first version of the poem:—
I saw thee only once,
Although thy gentle tones
Said soft:—
"Come hither oft."
Therefore my spirit clings
Heaven's porter by the wings,
And holds
Its gated golds
Apart, with thee to press
A private business;
Whence
Deign me audience.
Your singer did not come
Back to that stern, bare home:[21]
He knew
Himself and you.
I saw, as seers do,
That you were even you;
And—why,
I too was I.
In that, as in "The Fallen Yew"—
"I take you to my inmost heart, my true!"
Ah fool! but there is one heart you
Shall never take him to!—
his theme is one that often pressed home upon him:—